Cody Burke (’19) grew up in Oklahoma surrounded by a mother lode of presidential memorabilia, including documents signed by James Madison and James Monroe to autographed photographs of Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. Framed pictures and autographs of Dolley Madison, Jacqueline Kennedy, Rosalynn Carter and other first ladies hung in his parents’ home.

That seemed perfectly normal when he was growing up. His father, Bob Burke (P ‘19), is a well-known figure in the Sooner state as a former Oklahoma Secretary of Commerce, constitutional lawyer, prolific author of books on Oklahoma’s history and collector extraordinaire.

Bob Burke’s boyhood obsession with collecting rocks and leaves grew to collecting everything from rare Bibles to political campaign buttons to baseballs signed by the 1961 New York Yankees. But most of all, he collected autographs: from U.S. presidents, first ladies, vice presidents, world leaders, actors, musicians, Supreme Court justices and Civil War generals. At one time, he had amassed some 12,000 autographs.

“When it comes to collecting, there were things everywhere,” says Cody Burke of his childhood home and his dad’s law office. He is now a middle school English teacher and high school percussion director in Greenville, South Carolina.

“Friends would come over and think that was so cool, but to me it was just normal,” he says. “I think it was when I was a teenager that I realized that’s not something that everyone does.”

When he was young, Cody Burke received birthday cards and autographed photographs from hundreds of celebrities, including Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato, Sophia Loren and Betty White — thanks to his father.

It took Bob Burke 30 years to collect a signature, document or writing sample from every president, from Washington to Biden, and most of the first ladies.

After Cody Burke graduated from Wake Forest, his father donated his large collection of presidential documents, handwritten notes and autographed photos to the Z. Smith Reynolds Library’s Special Collections & Archives. He also donated his collection of pictures of each first lady with a handwritten note or signature — except for Martha Washington and Abigail Adams whose signatures have proven elusive. Anyone can view the collection by contacting Special Collections & Archives.

It’s a remarkable collection because it includes all the presidents in one place, says Tanya Zanish-Belcher, director of Special Collections & Archives. “It really humanizes the presidency. Especially for the early presidents through World War II, there’s an immediacy to it. You know they touched that piece of paper; they signed it.”

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Bob Burke, 76, built the collection by doggedly seeking signatures and documents from autograph dealers, rare bookstores and catalogs, before the internet made collecting easier.

The Bob Burke Collection of Presidential and First Lady Signatures includes documents signed by Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams; handwritten notes signed by John Tyler, James K. Polk and James Garfield; thank-you notes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Gerald R. Ford (P ’72, LL.D. ’80); and autographed photographs of more recent presidents and first ladies.

It’s one thing to see a presidential document in a book, but you gain a greater perspective seeing the real thing, Bob Burke says. “If it’s something that Abraham Lincoln signed or wrote, or U.S. Grant signed or Benjamin Harrison, if I see an authentic document, that means so much more because it shows that history is real. History is not about places and events. It’s about the people who participate in those events.”

Some of the collection includes items before or after a president’s tenure. There’s a legal document handwritten by William Henry Harrison, who served only a month before dying in office, before he was president, and a letter on U.S. Supreme Court stationery from William Henry Taft in his post-presidential role as Chief Justice.

Many of the earlier documents show the minutiae of being president, whether it was signing a military appointment or a land grant or writing a thank-you note.

“What we learn in school are major decisions of presidents,” Burke says. “I hope students find out that there are so many other administrative duties other than making foreign policy or giving a State of the Union address.”

Burke’s favorite items in the collection include several autographed photographs of Jimmy Carter. He met the future president in 1975 when Carter, who was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, stopped in Oklahoma. At the time, Burke was commerce secretary under Democratic Gov. David Boren.

“The food (at the banquet) was really lousy, and he (Carter) asked if there was some place in town we could go eat,” Burke recalls. “Well, there was this little Dairy Freeze, … and I got to sit at the table with Jimmy Carter and David Boren. I was so impressed with Carter. He said a prayer before we ate our cheeseburgers.”

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Both father and son have vivid memories of their first visit to Wake Forest. Cody Burke still has a photograph taken that day. He’s standing on the Quad; behind him is the marching band playing in front of Wait Chapel. Cody Burke later joined the band and played bass drums.

“You can see some of the marching band, particularly the drum line. I went on to know these people,” he says. “One of the guys who’s really tiny in that picture, I was just the best man in his wedding. I got a picture with my future friends before even knowing that they would be friends.”

Bob Burke, who’s written an impressive 170 books on Oklahoma’s history and famous residents, felt an immediate connection to Wake Forest when he noticed a familiar name on the Fine Arts Center — James Ralph Scales, a native of Oklahoma and a member of the Cherokee nation. Burke knew Scales’ name from his study of Oklahoma history. Scales was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State University and a past president of Oklahoma Baptist University before becoming president of Wake Forest in 1967. (Burke hopes to write a book on Scales one day.)

Cody Burke wasn’t surprised his dad found a connection between Wake Forest and Oklahoma. “I’m 100% certain he’s the world’s foremost Oklahoma historian. He’s written more books about the state than anyone. He knows anyone who’s ever had a connection to Oklahoma.”

They soon found another Sooner connection: Associate Professor of Music Brian Gorelick (P ’17) once taught at the community college a mile from the Burke family home. (And, yes, Bob Burke does have an autograph of Gorelick’s famous brother, Kenny G.)

Cody Burke graduated in three years, but he packed a lot into those years. He sang in the concert choir under Gorelick and in the a cappella group Innuendo. He appeared in University Theatre productions, joined the Anthony Aston Players and performed in comedy shows, a harbinger of his standup comedy routine today. He played drums in the marching band, under Director of Bands Kevin Bowen and then-percussion director Greg Dills, and in the orchestra, under director David Hagy.

He majored in philosophy and minored in anthropology while also taking education courses. He easily recalls favorite teachers and mentors: Philosophy professor Emily Austin introduced him to his favorite philosopher, Plato. Associate philosophy professor Stavroula Glezakos (P ‘28) taught his favorite class, the Philosophy of Love and Friendship. He studied in Nepal with associate anthropology professor Steven Folmar.

After graduating, Burke joined Teach for America and moved to Greenville, South Carolina. He earned a master’s in education from Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina, and is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Louisiana Monroe.

He inherited some of his father’s collecting genes. He collects cowboy hats, Legos, old video games, art collected from his overseas travels, Barbra Streisand vinyl records and, perhaps in a nod to his father, autographs from the cast of the 2009-15 TV show “Glee.”

Like his father, he’s started writing books, and has finished two: a young adult novel, “Beta Testing,” which he started in an adolescent literature class at Wake Forest taught by Associate Professor of Education Alan Brown (MAEd ‘05), and, fittingly, a biography of his father, “Bob Burke: Attorney. Author. Historian.”

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The road to Wake Forest for the Burke Presidential Collection began in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, Bob Burke’s hometown. As a boy, he collected baseball cards, stamps, fossils, rocks, leaves, most anything that caught his fancy.

He was always fascinated with American history and presidents. His father served in World War II under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a photograph of President Eisenhower hung on the wall in his grandmother’s living room. “From the beginning, stories about the founding of our country and early and courageous leaders intrigued me,” Burke says.

When he was a teenager, Burke wrote presidential candidate Barry Goldwater asking for a photograph for his dad. Goldwater did him one better, sending an autographed photo. “Well, that was pretty easy,” Burke said he thought at the time, sparking his lifelong interest in collecting autographs.

As a journalist early in his career and later as a political figure in Oklahoma, he met six current or future presidents — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — and corresponded with Rosalynn Carter.

Burke’s 170 books on Oklahoma’s history and famous people include biographies of Oklahoma Gov. and Sen. David Boren and Sen. Don Nickles, histories of the University of Oklahoma College of Law and the Oklahoma City University School of Law, and a book on the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.

The walls in his law office in Oklahoma City – a mile from the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum — are covered with frames holding some of his favorite things: a handwritten lawsuit by Francis Scott Key; a check signed by Orville Wright; and autographs of Benjamin Franklin, Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and all four members of the Beatles. And don’t miss the guitar signed by Oklahoma native Carrie Underwood.

He’s mostly stopped collecting autographs and is giving them away to universities, charities and his children and grandchildren. “I think the collecting is the fun for him, not the owning,” Cody Burke says. “He likes to collect, and then he’ll donate it to places like his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma. But I think he feels like Wake Forest is his alma mater (too) because of how much my whole family loved me being at Wake.”